It's stop motion animation, meaning that every frame is set up, shot as a still and then they move it slightly and take another shot. You can see why this needed various trips to the laser cutter (which was behind my desk, so I got a good view). Nifty, huh?

They did 'cheat' and use similar paper in loose sheets. It meant they could run more than one page at a time, which as you can imagine was a big plus. It would probably be possible to cut pages in a book, but focus depth and ventilation might be an issue. It would be a shame to set the whole thing on fire because hot gas from cutting got trapped near the flammable paper of the other pages.